In Your Skin
by arwenthemuse
Summary: Above all else, above the smell of her skin and hair and her body and above the sound of her uninhibited laughter, he likes that he's the cause of such a rare display of mirth. strong T/weak M - nothing too terribly explicit


The intimacy of these gestures would be off-putting coming from anyone else, but Helen finds herself uncannily comfortable beneath Nikola, one knee bent, leg resting gently against his body. Her breathing's returned to normal as of a handful of minutes ago, and he's resumed his ministrations to her body, but his thumb running back and forth across her hip and his lips exploring her person are no longer calculated. Purposeful, yes, but without any motive outside of personal enjoyment. His understanding of her body is like a sixth sense; buttons he's pushed very recently are utterly ignored—perhaps even avoided. He won't touch that spot on the side of her neck, brushes fingertips across her hip, but avoids her floating ribs (his favorite of her erogenous zones, if he's honest, though he's not sure why), and limits himself to the outskirts of her breasts. She sleepily strokes out a path from his temple, behind his ear, down to his jaw.

"You're hot," he remarks after a while, stroking her lower thigh while he kisses her belly.

He doesn't look coy when he says it, despite that he often jokes in such terms, and Helen snorts quietly in response, but she doesn't give him any of her disapproving looks. Nevertheless, she's suddenly out of her comfort zone again, and she tenses defensively at the apparent sincerity behind the compliment. She does, at the least, manage a relatively light tone when she retorts, "Please. I'm an old woman and you know it."

He eyes her cautiously, but doesn't hesitate to move over her, expression suddenly curious despite that his words are playful. "Of course. You're, what… nearly three-hundred these days? In your defense, you look much better than most women half your age."

There's a bare second or two of silence between them in the wake of the comment, a smirk appearing on his face as he watches her own expression change. In the moment afterward, when she tosses her head back into the pillow and laughs, his grin breaks. His brow's down against her shoulder in as brief a time, her body shaking beneath his as she abandons herself to the inexplicable merriment brought on by his antics. Above all else, above the smell of her skin and hair, above the shape and feel of her body and the fact that she's comfortable enough to let him explore her, and above the sound of her uninhibited laughter, he likes that he's the cause of such a rare display of mirth—because, egocentric though he is, Nikola can't help but care rather deeply about Helen's happiness.

And it's so rare to find Helen genuinely happy about anything. She's already demonstrated, in immediate reaction to his comment, that genuine good-humour is practically foreign to her these days. It's almost as if her brain is on a delayed switch; she needs the briefest pause to register the things that make her happy. Nikola is probably the only one who recognizes the extent of it; he's the only one left, after all, who knew her when she was happy - the only one left who knows she wasn't always so hard. It's for this reason that he's so intent to maintain her good mood. It's likely nobody will ever give him credit for caring as much as he does, but he doesn't particularly mind. Candidly, he has selfish reasons for keeping Helen satisfied too; at the moment, however, it's about Helen at ease. Helen with her hands moving absently across Nikola's face, back, arms; Helen comfortable enough to sprawl beneath him in her own bed; Helen enough at ease in the wake of his attentions to hand the reins over to Nikola and let him explore her body as he will.

"Alright, alright," he growls into her neck as her laughter begins to die. "A fourth your age."

She chokes on her renewed laugh when he kisses her soundly. "Cheeky bastard!"

"I know," he replies cockily, and he too is laughing, moving his kisses down to her torso again. He's got his mouth pressed against the middle of her belly, one hand guiding her bent leg gently towards her chest when he adds: "I mean it, you know. You are... _ravishing_." Then he's kissing her knee and she has her eyes closed, shaking her head a fraction of an inch to each side in a reaction even Nikola can't quite pin down.

"You're not so bad yourself," she replies at length, as if it's taken her this long to decide what kind of response he deserves, and he sighs against her thigh in response. She can't help but twitch—and there's something in the way his fingers dig into her calf while he draws out the sigh that tells her he means for it to be that way. "Nikola," she scolds, fingers pressed into his shoulder, but he's back to feigning a thoroughly one-track mind.

"I can't believe that after all we've been through, that's all you have to say," he mumbles into her skin, pretending hurt. But every brush of his lips and teeth against her thigh, with just the right pressure in just the right places, and every twitch of his fingers against her leg as he somehow manages to massage her calf and hold her at bay at the same time proves that he's as intent on pleasing her as he was less than a minute before; the way he intends to do this has merely altered again.

"Nikola, I'm tired," she mutters, and it's a horrible excuse that she's not sure why she's given.

He seems to know this is true, just like he knows almost every other damned thing about her. He laughs easily against her skin, and the sensation prompts her to grit her teeth and dig her nails into his shoulder. He's too obvious when he's teasing her, but it's not about teasing for very long at all. Between the long, measured caresses he's trailing up her thigh, he poses a question that's obviously meant to be rhetorical: "Did I ask you to do anything?"

Her quiet grunt, followed by a gasp and a carefully-controlled exhale indicate her assent.


End file.
